Zen in the Art of Writing
In this mode, I found, I had stronger opinions than when I was trying to be Hemingway. If something wasn’t working, I knew what to do about it, immediately and instinctually, in the form of an impulse (“Oh, that might be cool”), whereas before I’d been rationally deciding, in stiff obeisance to what I thought a story should, or must, do. This was a
... See moreGeorge Saunders • A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life
Once again I was struck by one of the miracles of the cognitive process—that the act of writing will summon from the buried past exactly what we need exactly when we need it. Memory and intuition and chance associations will always generate a certain percentage of what any writer writes. The remainder is generated by reason.